A Sephardi Turkish Patriot is the biography of Gad Franco, who was at first a journalist, then a lawyer and a jurist, and a prominent representative of Turkey’s Jewish community over the first half of the 20th century. It also covers quite in-depth the history and travails of Turkey’s Jews, from the arrival of the Sephardim from Spain up to their massive migration to Israel in the late Forties and early Fifties. The book conveys Franco’s vision and hopes for Turkey as fair, inclusive, secular society, where all citizens, all minorities, would be equal and accepted, a vision that still resonates with us today. That did not materialize, and Franco’s hopes were dashed. Turkey became instead an authoritarian republic, severely repressing its minorities, including the Jewish one, while ethno-nationalism was the glue that held it together.
Franco was born in Milas, a small town close to the Asia Minor coast, in 1881, into a lineage of Sephardi rabbis. As a child he was sent off to Rhodes for his studies, lived with his educator uncle Moshe Franco, later the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Palestine, and studied in Turkish and French as well as in Hebrew. After returning to Milas, he taught at and directed the local Jewish school. Franco then moved to Smyrna at the age of 21, and worked as a journalist for the Ladino press, promoting the modernization of Ottoman Jews, their greater participation in Ottoman society through the learning of the Turkish language, but also defending Jewish identity against excessive westernization. He supported the Young Turk Revolution of 1909 and the constitutional rule of law, became a lawyer and married the daughter of David Fresco, the editor of El Tyempo, the most important Ladino daily of the times.
The Ottoman Empire’s control of Palestine was critical for the Zionist project, and Herzl approached the Sultan as of 1896 to obtain special territorial rights there, but to no avail. The Alliance Israélite Universelle, Franco, Fresco and other Sephardi intellectuals opposed Zionism which they perceived as a threat to assimilation, risking Jews being seen as traitors and having an independentist project of their own, just like Greek and Armenian minorities. After a decade of devastating wards, in 1920 the Greek army, with British and French support, invaded and occupied Smyrna. Like so many other Jews, Franco emigrated and found refuge in Paris, where he lived with his wife and children for two years.
When Mustafa Kemal, the future Atatürk, regained control of the country, Franco felt it was his patriotic duty to return to Istanbul in 1922, despite his wife’s clamoring against it. For two decades, he conducted a successful life: first as a constitutional scholar, with a doctorate from the Sorbonne obtained in 1925, and as the owner-editor of the Journal of Juridical Studies which he published for 16 years at his own expense to contribute to the rule of law; secondly as a wealthy lawyer representing foreign companies investing in Turkey, as he had done in Smyrna; and third, as a prominent representative of the Jewish community, defending its interests and institutions at critical junctures with the government. In 1942, at the peak of his career and personal success, Franco was taken down in a punishing campaign to expropriate the Jewish, Greek and Armenian minorities and to Turkify the economy: the Varlik Vergisi, or Wealth Tax Law. All his properties were confiscated and 15 days later he was sent off to harsh labor camp in the heart of Anatolia to shovel snow.
This was a devastating blow, which left him physically sick, morally crushed, and totally impoverished. Upon return, he was disbarred, prevented from traveling to Palestine, and refused a passport as he was considered a threat to the republic he had believed in so fully.
The last decade of Franco’s life was a painful aftermath of his downfall, during which he faced more humiliations, huge debts to repay, the departure of many of his family’s members abroad, and periods of great conflicts with his wife. His death in 1954 was mourned as a huge loss by the Turkish Jewish community.
Comments